Sky Fishes
by chane
Summary: In between fishes and skies there is nothing but dreams. This, Boggs thinks, is perfectly fine, since dreams are such a rare thing to come across.


_I'm surprised that the next speaker is Boggs, who I think of as a muscular robot that does Coin's bidding. "When she sang the song. While the little girl died." Somewhere in my head an image surfaces of Boggs with a young boy perched up on his hip. In the dining hall, I think. Maybe he's not a robot after all. — "Mockingjay" by Suzanne Collins (Page 75, Paragraph 1, U.S. Hardcover version)_

Nocere has met many people, but none quite like Coragestus Boggs, and Coragestus Boggs is _strange_.

Nocere remembers their first meeting, when she was but four and small and he already a towering man. Coragestus had always had the most strange disposition around her, a kind, gentle and almost nurturing nature that Nocere had never seen in the others. She decides within the mere hours she spends with him, following like a lost pup, that it is natural. There was always something else, a sense of curiosity or call of nature, that drew her in.

When she goes unnoticed in the Command Room for the third time at Coragestus's side, he is alarmed, and speaks to her for the first time, "I know you're looking for him, but I'm not your father!" He states, squatting and holding her shoulders firm, and staring into her eyes. Coragestus had always had a pair of curiously colored eyes, to her, such a _blue_ hue. "I wish I was," he murmurs, but her mind is not on these nonsensical words about a creature she has never heard of, "But I'm _not_."

"Is the sky the color of your eyes?"

Coragestus might have been proud to say that he was rarely thrown off-guard, but in that simple sentence, he found himself stumbling, staring down at her. What does one say to a child that has never seen the light of day? How do you describe it without instilling a wrenching want to witness the sight for themselves?

The curve of a pale hand finds his cheek instead, a small thumb petting his cheekbone, "They must be," she states, matter-of-fact and serious, "Because you are so tall, surely you are a piece of the sky as well. Tell me, Mr. Sky, why did you come here?"

It occurs to him that regardless of her seriousness and the way she is not at all a _child_, she is still _childish_. And although he has done it before, he does not want to break her dreams. He knows he is about to hurt her irreparably in this way. But he says it anyway, calm and careful, "To help you. To help everyone, because…" and he pauses, "Because I want you to see the sky."

Yes, that is what this is all for, he thinks to himself as she digests this information.

"All right," Nocere whispers into her shoulder, she reaches out and asks, and it so sounds like a plead, "Will you hold me, Mr. Sky? I want to be close to you."

Obediently, Coragestus embraces her, holds her in his arms, and he thinks this is what it must be like to have a child. How sweet, how wonderful, this feeling, and he cherishes it like a privileged treat for good work, only this requires nothing on his end. Only that he is there.

It is so sweet he feels tears well up in his eyes.

"Don't cry," Nocere murmurs to him, a smiling and bright-eyed wonder, "You'll make your friends sad and it'll rain!"

So he laughs instead, joyous and bitter all at once.

When she reaches for his hand, he allows her to hold his fingers. And he knows, in this sliver of happiness that he wishes, but does not hope for, that he wants her to be happy and free. To see the sky and everything that lies between the very depths of District 13 and the heavens that she knows nothing of.

Any doubt plaguing Coragestus Boggs was eliminated with the arrival of one girl in his life, and he knows he will hurt her one day for allowing her to dream, but he hopes that she will be able to have that bit of happiness that he did not know for long. And he hopes that she will know it for the rest of her hopefully very long life. Because it is for her that he will go into this head high and chest out. For her that he is willing to do anything to further their progress. It is she, and she alone that cements this promise for a better world.

Coragestus never broke this promise. The year after, when she is an inch taller and knows what a father is but not whom hers is, Coragestus would tell her stories of the sky if he could. One day, she would see the sky, but everyday she would see a sliver of it in his eyes. And it is there in those clueless and knowing eyes, that the promise of blue skies lie between them.

And that was why, out of all the people Coragestus Boggs had met, Nocere was special.

* * *

_Any man can be a father. But it takes someone special to be a dad. — Unknown_

If fishes were wishes and wishes were fishes, Nocere will admit to wanting to have a thousands of fishes and wishes and fish-wishes and wish-fishes at her disposal. After all, who does not have a few wishes they wish to have fulfilled? She has wishes like everyone else, although most can only talk of the war. And Nocere does not expect that to change, because they do not know wishes or fishes or fishy-wishes and that is constant, because they do not want to. They've got everything there, all that they've ever known.

Why search for more and make yourself discontent? This is simple, a wish in those whose wishes are fishes and flop out of water. Dead.

Coragestus Boggs notices her, and listens to her wishes, the pitiful little guppies that they are with a patient ear and invisible smile. He supposes that he should stop her babble — everyone thinks she's insane and she's only four. But there is respite in her little fantasies, and maybe it's him yearning to be her, but all the more wishes and fishes or whatever it is that she has, all the better for him to listen to.

"I wish for a dad," she declares on one particularly horrid day for Coragestus and he is stunned. So she knows, huh. Can't be helped. But he still feels his heart drop, "But I know it will not come true." She states, all business and words and propriety of one announcing a death. The death of a fish or a wish or wishy-fish. "So instead, I shall fish for one."

Nocere's eyes, which are dark as coal but are alight with smidges of violet, meet the sky and she smirks, "Hook. Line. And sinker."

And it was so, he finds, as he listens to her giggle. He has been captured by the dawning evening, inevitable and peaceful, which changes the sky from blue to noir in the fading of the sun.

The next day, he signs the papers to have her placed in his care and home. Her hosts thank him as though he is alleviating a great curse.

So he thanks them for allowing him to have his single blessing in life. And she thanks them because now she will not have to listen to "The dreadful animal sounds you make!" And scampers off.

And so although Nocere knows his name before she knows his voice, she calls him Mr. Sky and Courage and she learns more from what she calls him then from anything the elders teach her. She will follow him in silence and listen to his stories she knows to be fables, because they are kind and thoughtful and ever so beautiful and they ease the throbbing. Indulges in these pleasantries that are a living dream scape.

Because if wishes are fishes and fishes are wishes, she has neither.


End file.
